Soccer simply remains really popular at the youth level. That hasn't translated into growth of pro sports at all in most cities. However, some MLS teams actually draw and do pretty well but mostly in large cities and of course large cities with a high population of immigrants, especially Hispanic which makes sense.

Onto the topic. I'm not seeing the overall benefit of this soccer stadium plus a public ice rink. I guess it's nice that there will be a cool stadium for some tournaments and high school playoffs, some smaller type concerts, but I have no idea of the penguins play in this.

how many ice skating rinks and small concert venues can this city handle? And shouldn't the pens be focusing on redevelopment of the consol area? We have the north shore which is ok but has an awesome concert venue, now a venue in station square that can host shows and an ice rink, we have a few show venues on the south side and an ice rink there, now we are going to develop another area in Uptown with (according the reason the pens went with AEG) a small concert venue and I would hope an ice rink.

I mean don't get me wrong it's cool to have lots of areas and heck the pens can throw ice rinks up everywhere for all I care. I guess I am just not seeing all this potential development in Pgh ending up on the correct side of the ledger. It's starting to seem like too much for too little population, and with the success of Stage AE just not sure these other places can sustain themselves.